The Beer Summit

"Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least-informed people in the Western world."

Neil Postman

The hype over the Beer Summit drove me crazy today. The media played it up. MSNBC ran a Beer Summit countdown. America has two wars and a health care crisis. The media is more focused on theatre than their original role of investigate reporting.

President Obama, Vice-President Biden, Sgt. Jim Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. sitting around a table does not make fascinating television. Josh Gerstein of Politico ran the headline "'Beer summit' letdown." The event was set up for Gates and Crowley to work out their differences and simmer down racial hostilities that the media was too happy to play up.

The American public would be more inform if cable news and talk radio died. Imagine people actually reading the news again. Better informed citizens make a better country. Current cable news is a hybrid of public access televsion and professional wrestling. It should be no shock there are people who believe the government attacked the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon. The current birthers are an extension of the ignorance Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh spiel at the public.